A Woman's Battles and Transformations - by Édouard Louis (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Barrios Book in Translation Prize

A Woman's Battles and Transformations is a portrait of the author's mother by the acclaimed writer of the international bestsellers The End of Eddy and History of Violence.

Late one night, Édouard Louis got a call from his forty-five-year-old mother: "I did it. I left your father." Suddenly, she was free.

This is the searing and sympathetic story of one woman's liberation: of mothers and sons, of history and heartbreak, of politics and power. It reckons with the cruel systems that govern our lives--and with the possibility of escape. Sharp, short, and fine as a needle, it is a necessary addition to the work of Édouard Louis, "one of France's most widely read and internationally successful novelists" (The New York Times Magazine).

Review Quotes

"The writing [in A Woman's Battles and Transformations] is intensely lyrical but the subject rubs up against the political . . . Moving and beautiful."
--David Keymer, Library Journal (starred)

"Ravishing . . . This one-sitting read, slim and complete, dazzles with memories sieved to their finest grains and affirms the extraordinary power of writing."
--Annie Bostrom, Booklist

"While the narrative is pulled from his life, the personal is always political--and Louis tracks his mother's violence and pain as intertwined with capitalism, patriarchy, and systems beyond our control. Translated by his friend and novelist Tash Aw, this is not to be missed."
--Jonny Diamond, Lit Hub (most anticipated)

Praise for The End of Eddy

"Excellent . . . Not just a remarkable ethnography. It is also a mesmerizing story about difference and adolescence, one that is far more realistic than most."
--Jennifer Senior, The New York Times

"Brilliant . . . Freighted with an ambivalence that animates the book and gives it a devastating emotional force. . . At once an act of solidarity and an act of vengeance."
--Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker

Praise for Who Killed My Father

"[Édouard Louis is] a global literary sensation . . . To understand what is happening now in France, or indeed, all over Europe, this is an essential text."
--The Irish Times

"Who Killed My Father is a political document that uses the force of memoir--incisive, confessional personal details--to bolster its argument that Louis's father's life (and by extension, his family) was ruined by politics. Compelling."
--Kevin O'Rourke, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Édouard Louis [is] the vanguard of France's new generation of political writers . . . He has given his people a voice."
--Arjun Neil Alim, Evening Standard

"A brief, poetic telling of the myriad ways societal contempt, homophobia, and poverty can kill a man . . . Deeply personal."
--Martha Anne Toll, NPR

"Literary phenomenon Édouard Louis . . . gives voice to the way the cruel, crude hegemony of masculinity has essentially destroyed his father's life . . . The careful, deliberate narrative reads as if Louis were testifying, or building a case for a jury in real time."
--Lauren Elkin, The Guardian

About the Author

Édouard Louis is the author of the international bestsellers The End of Eddy and History of Violence as well as the nonfiction book Who Killed My Father. Compared to Jean Genet by The Paris Review, his work deals with sexuality, class, and violence. Louis was born Eddy Bellegeule in the working-class village of Hallencourt in northern France, and he attended the École Normale Supérieure and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.